Cybersecurity Experts Unveil The Worst Passwords Ever

Jon Hartley 12/19/2018

Passwords are an increasingly important part of our daily lives. Not only do we use them to log onto Facebook or check our email, but also to check online bank statements, access online shopping accounts with sensitive information, and much more. Once an afterthought, a strong password is now more of a must than ever.

Therefore, one cybersecurity firm is extremely disappointed with some of the bad, predictable, and completely ineffective passwords they’ve found in 2018. Let’s get into some of the worst offenders now. Let’s just say that if your password for anything is “password,” you can go and change it right now. We’ll wait.

Alright, so what are some of the worst passwords of 2018, or likely, of all time? Sequential numbers account for a good portion of them. In fact, five of the top seven spots are sequential lists of numbers, with the top spot going to “123456.” Surprisingly, “123456789” is the third-worst password, making it worse than the fifth-ranked “12345”…but wouldn’t five digits be easier to guess? Don’t ask us.

Other terrible passwords include common words such as “iloveyou,” “welcome,” (as in “Welcome into my account!”) and “football.” Some of the words are also quite simple, but unexpected – “sunshine” and “monkey” are both in the top 18.

Some of the other entries show a real lack of effort. For instance, people correctly thought that “password” was too easy to guess and instead went with “password1”? Yeah, that’s not gonna be good enough.

According to the experts, it’s not just numerical strings and common words that are easy for hackers to crack. “Hackers have great success using celebrity names, terms from pop culture and sports, and simple keyboard patterns to break into accounts online because they know so many people are using those easy-to-remember combinations,” said SplashData CEO Morgan Slain.

Oh, and the worst part of all? In total, 10% of people use at least one password from the top 25 worst passwords list. Time to go update them, people!